North American accounting researchers’ acceptance of debatable research and authorship practices

Many research and authorship practices are debatable or poorly understood. Our purpose was to capture accounting researchers’ attitudes and understandings about questionable research practices (QRPs), advancing the discussion and study of research ethics throughout the academic community. We sent email requests to all accessible US and Canadian authors who had published in any of twelve leading accounting research journals during the past twelve years, asking them to rate the acceptability of 44 QRPs, while allowing unlimited comments. We also solicited examples of research integrity (good or bad) that participants had witnessed or participated in, and 74 participants offered relevant anecdotes. The results shed light on the contemporary attitudes and perceptions of a diverse sample of 375 active accounting researchers, with more prolific publishers being well represented. To organize discussion of the 44 items, and contribute to theory development, we conduct a factor analysis that identifies five categories of research practices and six categories of authorship practices. The identified factors may serve to focus future research.